THE REDISCOVERIES OF 2024 By Peter Filichia
This month, I wasn’t like most people who listened to “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Feliz Navidad” or, needless to say, “White Christmas.”
No, first I took out my album of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Alan Menken and Lynn Ahrens did the immortal Dickens tale proud. Everybody has a favorite Menken tune – he’s given us so many from which to choose – but this recent listen reminded me that mine might very well be “God Bless Us, Everyone.”
Then came A CHRISTMAS STORY, which put Benj Pasek and Justin Paul on the Broadway map. It brought back the first time I heard it during the show’s initial tryout stop in Hershey, Pennsylvania. How impressed I was then – and now – when listening to “Ralphie to the Rescue.” The fantasies of a young pre-teen were perfectly set to a m melody that was in tune with Vaughn Monroe’s No. 1 hit of 1948, “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky.” YouTube it, and you’ll even better appreciate what Pasek and Paul achieved.
Next was HERE’S LOVE – which has since been retitled MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET: THE MUSICAL, which indeed it is. Its title song offers a genuinely nice sentiment – that ‘tis the season to be enacting a metaphorical ceasefire with our rivals.
The musical debuted in 1963, so the references are very much of that time. Not one of the then-famous people whom Meredith Willson cited are alive. However, the melody certainly still is, and you’ll find that a few opponents (such as CBS vs. NBC) remain on the scene.
Sure, December makes it easy to remember holiday-themed musicals and songs, but I made many other rediscoveries during 2024. For every now and then, I decide (as do you), “Well, let’s play this album; I haven’t heard it in a while.” And that reacquaints me and you with a number of numbers.
When we think of List Songs, what might come to mind are titles as venerable as “You’re the Top” in ANYTHING GOES or as comparatively recent as BAT BOY’s “Show You a Thing or Two.” But one of the best ones comes from HAIR.
”Dead End” tells us “Don’t walk! Keep out! Hands off! All trespassers will be shot!” This song makes us realize how many, many commands we’re subjected to, day in and day out. Gerome Ragni and James Rado, by listing so many in a row, convince us that we’re not as free as we think we are or would like to be.
(Although there is a more personal “Dead End” that the song details, too.)
If you’re only familiar with the Original Broadway Cast Album, you’re wondering why you can’t quite remember “Dead End.” The reason is that it’s only on the Original Off-Broadway cast album that was made seven months earlier when the show was the first-ever attraction at Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre.
Although “Dead End” was dropped before the show sauntered to Broadway, it did wend its way back into the musical, but only after the new cast album was recorded. So, discover or rediscover it.
After I endured another day of what seems to be endless construction around town, I was reminded of AVENUE Q’s “There Is Life outside Your Apartment.” Despite the all-too familiar jack-hammering heard mid-song, we do come away with the main message that there’s cool, uh, stuff to do around New York City.
That’s especially true between 41st and 54th Streets and between Sixth and Eighth Avenues. Of course, highly recommended is THE OUTSIDERS, which won this past season’s Tony as Best Musical. Perhaps in the years to come, it will yield a rediscovery, but as of now, we’re all still discovering the pleasures of the score by Jonathan Clay, Zach Chance and Justin Levine. Clay and Chance are better known as Jamestown Revival – a team that will someday see revivals of THE OUTSIDERS in the 27 Jamestowns this country has, as well as points beyond.
The most famous of these towns is Jamestown, New York, because it’s the birthplace of Lucille Ball. (Her middle name? Her mother even named her Desiree.)
Ball only appeared on Broadway once – in WILDCAT, a 1960 musical that endured notorious book trouble, but whose album sounds as if nothing ever went wrong.
Well, almost nothing. Again I rediscovered that Ball made an error in the rollicking song “What Takes My Fancy.” In playing the rough-and-tumble Wildcat Jackson, she tells one of Centavo City’s citizens, “Well, don’t let this unravel your undies, but you might not make a bad groom.” And though she should have sung “All cleaned up for company Sun-dees” – which rhymes with “undies” – Ball pronounced it “Sun-days.”
All right, granted, “Sun-day” is technically correct, but plenty of people do pronounce the word as Sun-dee, and Wildcat Jackson would have been one of them.
Once again, while playing WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN? I rediscovered the score’s best song. Funny that it doesn’t belong to top-billed, Tony-nominated star Steve Lawrence, but his two other above-the-title co-stars: Sally Ann Howes and Robert Alda (the original Sky Masterson and you-know-who’s daddy).
Her character was screenwriter Kit Sargent; his was screenwriter Al Manheim. They have that in common, but what they don’t have is mutual love; Al wants her, but Kit wants the ruthless, conniving and utterly dishonest Sammy (that was Lawrence).
It was hardly the first time that a nice woman has fallen for a skunk, and Lord knows it won’t be the last. Al graciously accepts rejection and defeat in one of the most beautiful unheralded musical theater songs: “Maybe Some Other Time.” Ervin Drake’s music and lyrics here – and in the entire, underrated score, for that matter – deserve your attention.
Surprised that I’m including FIDDLER ON THE ROOF’s “Tradition” on a list of rediscoveries? But I’m not referring to the original 1964 cast album where Zero Mostel head this great opening number, but Jason Alexander’s Tevye in his Tony-winning performance in JEROME ROBBINS’ BROADWAY.
Considering how noble Tevye is (and how callous Alexander was in MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG as a hard-bitten Broadway producer), by the end of the 1980s, few would have guessed that he’d become household name famous as a perennial loser who often had his foot in his mouth, eyes, ears, nose and throat, in what many consider to be the greatest sitcom ever.
Alexander was in California last month playing Tevye for real in a genuine, Lonny Price-directed FIDDLER revival. Wish I could have been there to see how much – if at all – his performance changed from JEROME ROBBINS’ BROADWAY, but, as we all learn sooner or later, we can’t see every show.
“Where Did the Summer Go to?” is the charm-filled song that comes from the musical version of ANNE OF GREEN GABLES. Old-timers may have seen the London production in 1969, but even a member of Generation Z could have caught seen it – if he or she were in Canada’s Prince Edward Island some recent summer. Since 1965, it’s almost been an annual attraction there.
Given the way that time flies at supersonic speeds, it won’t be long before we’re saying, “Where Did the Summer Go to?” nine months from now. The soothing balm will be all the rediscoveries we’ll find and appreciate in 2025.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
